


Dodecatheon pulchellum

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 09:40:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4132695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were worse ways to die, he knew. He’d seen it happen, on the streets of Heartland lit by fire and flame. But the question was always — who and what was left behind? Ute wanted to claw back to where the living were because there was so much undone and so many people left behind. In the blackness — was death simply darkness? — he reached out his hands and grasped for anything.</p><p>Someone reached back.</p><hr/><p>Little what if and I thought Rin and Ute could have an interesting dynamic. . . maybe!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dodecatheon pulchellum

There were worse ways to die, he knew. He’d seen it happen, on the streets of Heartland lit by fire and flame. But the question was always — who and what was left behind? Ute wanted to claw back to where the living were because there was so much undone and so many people left behind. In the blackness — was death simply darkness? — he reached out his hands and grasped for anything.

Someone reached back.

“Come a little closer,” he knew that voice. He had grown up with that voice — but there was something different about it. He stepped — he couldn’t see his legs, he could barely feel his feet — forward and further into the black. “You’re almost there.”

Ruri.

The hands that held his were familiar too. The callouses at the tips of her fingers, the small scar at the base of her thumb from a summer night of firefly catching and a broken glass jar, the bracelet around her wrist. 

Ruri. Ruri.

He was so sure that he found her.

“There!” The voice shouted and he’s blinded by the sudden light.

\+ + +

“You’re up,” he knows that voice. Ute also knows that face. He grew up seeing that face — it’s Ruri’s face, but not Ruri’s clothes. She’s dressed in pastel pinks and whites, the deck holsters on her belt are hard to miss, as well. He should know those decks almost as well as his own. She doesn’t stand like Ruri does, her hands are clasped in front of her an unusual stillness to her pose — Ruri was never so still.

But he needed to hope.

“Ruri — ?” Ute knew better, after meeting Yuzu but he still had to _hope_ even moreso now, because he knew what he left behind with Shun and with Yuuya. There was no way to return home if everyone was gone. There hadn’t been a point in rebuilding without their companions — that much they had all believed in. So he hoped.

“No, I’m Rin,” she said but then — “I met Ruri.”

“Where — is she safe?” Ute stood. His body felt unfamiliar, tired, like he had swam for miles and only just returned to land. 

“I don’t know, we were in the same place but then — “

And Ute remembered. He had ended up here because he’d died. Hope broke and shattered and he sat down. He missed the bed — there was a bed? — edge and stumbled to the floor.

Rin carefully sat next to him and took his hand. He can tell now, it’s the wrong hand — the small sliver of scar tissue is too long and wide, the bracelet a different shape, she has more callouses than Ruri did.

“I died, but so did you. There has to be a way out.”

She didn’t sound sure of herself and her hands shook, but she smiled. Her eyes were so serious and it was barely a smile, but it was enough. He nodded.

\+ + +

The first time he left her alone, he didn’t know what had happened. There was just a _yank_ like a hook in his chest and then he was gone and pulled through a different kind of blackness. Unlike — death — before it was heavy and roiling and felt like a chasm filled with lightning.

Ute found Yuuya there, touched his hand and tried to say — stay calm, think it through, I’m here with you — but something else happened instead. He’d never felt that kind of uncontrolled rage before and when he was back with Rin, he couldn’t say anything about it.

She didn’t press him, immediately, just sat back on her heels and watched him with the kind of soft gaze he didn’t really understand. Especially when, a few hours later, she stood up straight and pointed her finger at him.

“Enough sulking, tell me what happened.”

He found she was difficult to refuse.

The second time he left her alone, Ute tried to grab onto life a little harder, tried to find footing in Yuuya and in those feelings — but they were toxic and painful. It wasn’t his and it wasn’t Yuuya’s but somehow it was _both_ of them.

When he came back he couldn’t hear Rin for a while, only the echo of a raging dragon. She didn’t press him at all, that time, just held onto his hand as they walked through nothing.

\+ + +

The afterlife — or maybe it was still just death — was stark and empty. Every now and then they would walk by a familiar item, something _too_ familiar. The bed he had woken up on was his from back home, before Heartland burned to the ground. They walked by a pair of shoes from Rin’s childhood, a set of desks from Ute’s school, a section of track from a riding duel arena — something Rin had to explain to him.

They talked.

She told him about Hyugo — who looked like him, but was so different in personality she would never be able to confuse them. And Ute knew who that was and reluctantly shared his own part in knowledge. Rin shook her head, frowned and in one sorrowful moment said — “That’s Hyugo, he tries to shoulder the world but doesn’t think too much.” — then, she added, scowling and shaking her fist — “What a stupid boy! When I see him next I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.”

So he told her about Heartland — the before Heartland. His favorite park, where he and Ruri and Shun used to get ice cream and duel after school. That time Shun’s D-gazer got hacked and turned all of his raptors into _velociraptors_. The way the temperature would drop at night, but the thrum of Heartland’s streets — they were solar, and retained warmth through winter and chill nights — made annual midnight duel events fun.

“It’s not there anymore, is it,” Rin asked — she knew. “Sorry — it’s just, the way you talk about it. . . it’s like you’ll never see it again.”

It made him stop. Even if they rescue their companions and go back, Heartland won’t ever be the same.

\+ + +

She didn’t like to show him her weak side. Rin was a lot like Ruri in that way. When she was upset she turned away, or held her head up higher. Instead of Ruri’s clenched fists, Rin squared her shoulders and held her hands in front of her, fingers laced together.

Ute grabbed her hand, the next time she did it, slid his hands to her wrists and leaned forward so their foreheads almost touched.

“I know,” he said.

The reassurance was all she needed, before she threw her arms around him and started to cry. She had been so alone before he died too. She had been wandering alone through the ruin of her own memories and never thought she’d leave. She had — “Don’t give up.” 

They made a promise to each other, then. No matter what, they were both going to make it out alive.

\+ + +

He felt like he had to confess — because they had spent so much time together and because it felt like lying not to say it. It was a relief, to broach the subject with Rin and tell her he regretted some of his actions in the past. He hadn’t wanted to hurt people, but he had done it anyway. He hadn’t been good enough, clever enough, strong enough — or just _enough_ to do more than that.

“The king holds the world on his shoulders,” she had said in reply and pointed. He followed her finger, saw nothing than the empty direction they were headed. Rin smiled, a grin and a quiet quirk of the lips all at once, “I know.” She said.

Ute hadn’t cried in years. He had cried when the family cat had died and he had cried when Shun’s uncle had died in a car wreck and the three of them had sat outside after the funeral in the sun and none of them were old enough to really get it.

He hadn’t cried when the invasion started and he hadn’t cried when they fled Heartland. Ute hadn’t cried because he thought he hadn’t had any tears, as if all his sorrow had been hollowed out to phantom pains.

\+ + +

The last time he left her, he knew it would be different. The darkness that boiled up in Yuuya was stronger, had more voices to it and the hook that pulled him back towards the living stayed lodged in his soul.

For the first time, he tried to reach back to the dead, away from the howling madness that was consuming Yuuya. (He heard, too, Shun’s voice and a voice like Ruri’s, but rougher.)

“Rin!” He reached — and reached and _hoped_.

His fingers brushed hers and he held on to what little of her voice that he could catch.

“We’ll — someday — it was — promise!”

A dragon, then another and a third, yanked Ute back into the darkness in Yuuya’s heart and he knew he wouldn’t be leaving again. The darkness closed around him and somewhere he could hear Yuuya laughing and crying.

But he had made a promise and he had already lost too many things. Ute squared himself to the blackness and stepped forward. There was a way out of this too. First, he’d find Yuuya, then they would conquer this together.

(Ute was gone, Rin realized, she had only felt the ghost of his hand in hers, but that was enough — she kept walking forward.)


End file.
